


Mistake

by bronwins



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix It, Fluff, Idiots in Love, arguing used as a romantic device, jaime has fatal heart eye syndrome, sorry everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:40:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18905011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronwins/pseuds/bronwins
Summary: "What's your plan?"Jaime Lannister - warrior, tactician, leader of men - gapes at his brother as though he's never heard the word before.





	Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> GRRM and HBO own it all. Fix it because season 8 has been one long dumpster fire, set post-bang.
> 
> (Kind of unbeta’d, other than the yodalike guidance of my closest friend)

This, he thinks, is going to go well.

(Correction: this _has_ to go well. Failure, as they say, is not an option.)

"What's your plan?"

Jaime Lannister - warrior, tactician, leader of men - gapes at his brother as though he's never heard the word before.

"Plan? I, uhm. Don't know, actually."

"Oh. Well." Tyrion says. "You've thought ahead? About what she's going to do when you tell her?"

"Uhm." The answer is no, not really, but it's not as though Jaime hasn't been thinking about this for a long time. For every waking second, more or less, since they'd been marked for slaughter at the hands of the dead. And somehow, of the two challenges, this seems the more insurmountable. Tyrion's lips flicker over his teeth in a grimace.

"Better you than me, then."

"Thanks."

He has always been brave. Cunning and calculation had come naturally to his sister; wit and cleverness to his brother, but in the area of sheer pigheaded valor, Jaime has always finished first. The stupidest Lannister, so called, but that moniker and its bestower seem a long way away, now, even if what he's about to attempt could be called profoundly, even monumentally, stupid.

(Even if what he's about to attempt has left him quaking in his boots like a green squire before his first battle.)

As if to agree with words he has not heard, Tyrion half-lifts his goblet and drinks.

"Where is she now?"

"Be finishing her watch, I think," He says, voice tight and nauseated. "It's nearly midnight."

"And she's coming here? Should I be leaving?"

"It doesn't matter," Jaime chirps, light and noncommital. He wants to say: _if you leave before she comes, I will lose my fucking mind waiting_ , but he doesn't. Despite their differences, the one thing the Lannisters have always shared is a disdain for weakness.

"Hm," Tyrion regards him with a knowing look. "Just for another drink then." Jaime will have to remember to thank the Seven for his brother if he ever gets around to praying one of these days. Somewhere in the distance, a pair of oak doors groan open and closed, and the familiar sounds of jangling armor reverberate against the flagstones.

"What should I do?" His voice is barely a whisper, as though a great hand had suddenly twisted around his throat.

"Hardly the one to know given my history, don't you think?" Tyrion's face, when he looks at it, is scrunched into something amused and nearly pitying, and he cannot decide whether or not he'd rather kiss or strike his brother's cheek. "Though I've done quite a few foolish things in my time, so perhaps you're right in asking."

"You think I’m foolish?" Jaime bristles, though he's asking because he really _does_ want to know.

"No, I don't."

"What, then?" Armored legs clank closer, closer - Jaime counts four, or perhaps six, and at once he's reconsidering everything, retreating into the hollow in his chest reserved for secrecy and lies. Tyrion heaves a great sigh.

“It may be that you have a tendency to hide the truth to protect people,” he says. “And with our family, I can’t say I blame you.”

Behind them, there is muted chatter at the door, and then some clattering away as several of the legs he counted leave.

“She might run screaming.”

“She won’t,” says Tyrion, wriggling from his seat as the door swings gently open. “I’ve never heard her scream in my life.”

“Ser Jaime?” A familiar voice that makes his guts twist. “You asked to speak with me.”

“Try and tell the truth,” his brother is already headed for the door, wobbling just a little for the wine. The newly-made knight of Tarth - Brienne, tall and glistening in her armor - stands there and regards him with an odd little look as he exits. “And she’s a knight, by the way. Doesn’t need protecting."

Jaime wants to tear his hair out strand by strand.

"Ser Jaime? Protecting from _what_?"

"Oh for fuck's sake," he slumps in his seat, head in hands. "Sit down. I need to talk to you."

"Off to a good start!" Tyrion barely has time to shut the door before a pewter jug of ale sails through the air, at his head.

...

This, he thinks, is _not_ going well.

“Ser Jaime - ”

“Can you not call me by my name? Even now?”

“I hardly think it matters - ”

"You're so damn stubborn," he feels his blood boiling, good hand balling up his itchy northern doublet at the hem. "If you'd met him, the Night King himself would've balked under your will."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but the army of the Night King did _exactly that_ ," She spits, the dying fire sharpening features that were always destined to be blunt. "So I'd say we can put our _lives_ down to my stubbornness, in part."

He's got no jape for that but glares into the fire all the same, and begs any of the gods that will listen to make this easier. If they can hear him, they don't bother to reply.

“I was going to say,” she continues, gathering strength for some unknown task. “I don’t want you to feel as though you owe me something. For last night, I mean.”

“ _Seven Hells_ , wench.”

“Do you deny that drink does lower - that is, _impair_ one’s ability to make proper decisions?”

"And you were completely sober, were you?"

“We’ve spent a good deal of time together,” she says. “We’ve fought together and travelled together, and feelings can become confused - don’t think I’m so naive I don’t understand that. I don’t blame either one of us. These things can happen.”

“What do you know about _these things_ ,” Jaime snaps. “You were a blushing maid before I had anything to do with it.”

She goes red - so red that she reaches up to her face instinctively to mask it - and he regrets saying anything. She’d loved before, and that love had been born from similar circumstances - swords and armor, muddy marching and battlefields. They seem to spark something in the heart, or at least they do where Brienne of Tarth is concerned. And _he’d_ asked her here - it had truly edged upon begging - and now that she’s come, sitting in front of him, he can do nothing but offend and whine.

“I’m simply saying that there’s no shame in making a mistake,” her voice is measured but her eyes are huge and frightened, like a doe lost in the wood. This, Jaime thinks, is where she really, finally, will kill him.

“Did it feel like a mistake to you?”

Her lips go just a little slack and he can't help remembering how soft they were; how sweetly they tasted. She'd been inexperienced, certainly, but hadn't let that temper her enthusiasm, and he found the whole thing had been quite...charming. Unconsciously, she rubs a spot on her neck where his lips and teeth had been particularly attentive the night before, and his palms begin to sweat. Perhaps _charming_ isn't quite the right word.

“No,” she says. “I really...that is to say, I enjoyed it. It was uhm. Good.”

“Good. I feel the same.”

Silence. In the dying firelight she’s spooked, bewildered, and he searches frantically for the right words as he inches toward her.

“I’m no beauty,” His fingers find the flesh of her face - scarred and a little weatherbeaten, but soft enough and pleasantly pink - and he doesn't try to hide the glimmer in his eyes when her breath stumbles in her throat. “I’ll never be a wife. Or a mother.”

“Perhaps not,” he says. “Though you’re young yet.”

“I’m a knight,” she replies. “I’m sworn to Sansa Stark. I cannot break my oath.”

“I’m not asking you to break anything,” he says,

“Then what?” Brienne of Tarth - knight of the Seven Kingdoms, sworn protector of the Stark children, a hero of the Battle of Winterfell - stares at him as though he’s been speaking another language all this time. “What is there?”

Despite the complaining of his joints, he kneels before her, fingers dragging a line from her face to her knee. She looks as scared as he feels, but goddamn it, he tries again, because life is short and no one's getting any younger, and he's sick of watching himself wrinkle and grey in the mirror with nothing to show for it.

“I wanted to _say_ ,” he takes a shaking breath. “I - I know that I’m no prize. I’m old and tired, and whatever honor I had...well, nevermind. I know that I was never much of a knight. But I don’t care about you being a wife or mother, or anything other than what you’d like to be.” She opens her mouth to argue, then shuts it, and he can’t help but smile. Ever the warrior, even sitting together at the edge of the great hall. He loves her for it.

“What happened, it wasn’t - Brienne, you’re the...you’re the finest woman I’ve ever met. And I know that you can’t break your oath, but I want to stay with you, if you’ll have me, for as long as you’ll have me. I’ve thought about it and going back to Casterly Rock or King’s Landing when there’s nothing for me there seems a fool’s errand, and I...well. Frankly, I don’t want to be without you again.”

He feels a goddamn fool to say it, but she doesn’t look away, and it feels like he’s taken his skin off before her and is huddled, sticky muscle and crackling bone, waiting for her to say...anything.

“Are you _serious_?”

His lady, stubborn to the end. It makes his heart stir in his chest as he closes the space between them and kisses her, and after a half-moment of confusion, she reciprocates, hands tangling in his dirty hair. They break apart sometime later - it might’ve been quite a long time at that, as the fire has well and truly died - and even in the dark she’s so wide-eyed that he lets out a laugh.

“Come on, then.”

“Where?” He pulls her gently by the hand.

“I thought your quarters,” he says, soft against her ear. “But really, Brienne, I’ll go with you wherever you like.”

...

Later, in her bed - though it might be called _theirs_ now - he traces constellations between her freckles; here the Little Dipper, there Ursa Major, trying to prolong the sweetness of this moment. There will be other hard days, he knows, and more uncertainty, but for now he’s happy to be wrapped around her, listening to her soft breathing.

”A _mistake,_ ” he says gently. “Honestly wench. How could this ever be?”

“ _Jaime_.” She mumbles, not in the mood for an argument, shifting just a little in his grasp. “Night.”

He laughs, brushes some of her hair away from her ear, and drops a careful kiss onto her shoulder.

“Brienne. Night.”

He surrenders to the deep dark of sleep not long afterward, and, blessedly, dreams of her and nothing else at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who read! Much appreciated!


End file.
